


The End (when we allow it)

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, End of the World, Episode: s03e11 Utopia, F/M, Female Doctor (Doctor Who), Ficlet, Future Fic, Hope, Immortality, M/M, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Regeneration, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9202871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: The first time he reaches the end - the real end of everything - he is preoccupied and upset. He has just found the Doctor again.





	

The first time he reaches the end - the real end of everything - he is preoccupied and upset. He has just found the Doctor again. _After_ he’s been left behind. In his own frame of reference, he’s old then. Older than any human living in the 21st century has a right to be. 

But what are a few centuries give or take, and he knows he won’t count as all that old in comparison to others.

Back then he hopes it will never matter. He can be fixed. He can be mortal again.

But then the Doctor looks down at him with a frown as he revives. 

The revelation hurts.

Hurts more than the realization that this is where they come together again: The end of the universe in all its dangerous glory. It’s like a metaphor for the two of them.

* * *

The second time he arrives at the end of the universe, he arrives in the only way that matters: straight on and linear. He’s ancient. He’s a fact. He’s forever and always. At least as long as time exists. Centuries don't matter any longer.

The planet around him is dead. He’s the last to stay, while others have fled to some of the last colonies, not ready to give up. Younglings all of them, in his eyes.

With a smile he sits on his empty veranda in the middle of nowhere, watches the stars go out one by one. He waits. Finally, regrettably, there will be an end to all of this. even him, while somewhere on that dark spot above him that will soon be the last planet the Master will trick the Doctor out of a TARDIS and start a war centuries ago.

He chuckles. His memories are set in stone like his existence and he remembers every painful thing. He remembers that year that never was like it happened yesterday.

But so many good years came after.

With Torchwood. With the Doctor. Meeting and losing and searching and meeting again anew. He’d loved all of the faces, all of the Doctors who were one man. Good times. So many of them. While out there a Jack is confused and scared and left with his feelings of being rejected.

The familiar whoosh of the Tardis doesn’t surprise him. He’s come to expect it when he least expects or wants it, like the Doctor always knows when he needs to be shook up a little so his old bones won’t set. He grins when a tall lady with black cascading hair steps from the Tardis, dressed in a ridiculous yellow two piece suit. “What is it you’re doing here, Jack?”

“I came the long way around this time. All things end.”

The Doctor looks up. It’s _her_. Jack doesn’t need to ask. She finds that terrible little final planet and he knows she too is thinking of the Master and the things he will do, will have done, did. “Of course they do,” she agrees and sits down beside him.

He stares. She’s here. For him. The Doctor came for him again.

Impulsively he kisses her, this new _her_ that is not _him_ but is. Kissing at the end of the universe. He likes the thought.

She taps him on the shoulder and rolls her eyes. “You’re such a romantic.” That’s new. Not the fondness. The tone and the eyes and the soft lick of her lips. Swallowing, he allows himself to really see her. She’s new. And she’s not here to end. She’s nowhere ready yet.

“I get it,” she says. “One day even a fact will no longer be anchored to time.” She looks up. “But… I’m not ready yet. And neither are you. You’ve just been still for too long. Come with me again. Just for a while.”

He grins. “Is that an invitation?”

It’s adorable how she puckers her lips when she’s pouting. It reminds him of another incarnation. The young one with the terrible jacket. He’d loved that one. But this is so new. So new.

Exciting.

He remembers that once he’d done more than waiting. He’d been running. Fighting. Looking for excitement everywhere.

“Jack,” she says warmly and that is both old and new, “you invited yourself long before I ever said a word.”

He laughs and she snaps her fingers. The TARDIS’ doors open.

The universe is still ending. Soon. In this moment. But there are still so many places in space and time where he hasn’t been yet. He can still run.

Something new has just begun.


End file.
